IDC Sizes Up Disk Storage

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew $239 million in the first quarter of 2007 (1Q07), posting 5.9% growth from a year ago to $4.3 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $6.1 billion up 7.2% from the prior year's first quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped surpassed 1,000 petabytes for the second consecutive quarter, growing 60.4% over the first quarter of 2006.

"External storage systems selling under $50,000 drove the growth in the first quarter of 2007," said Brad Nisbet, program manager, IDC Storage Systems. "After several quarters of impressive growth in 2006 for midrange and high-end systems selling with average prices above $50,000, we saw only modest gains in these systems this quarter. The growth in lower-end products indicates opportunity across the board as customers continue to invest in a broad spectrum of available storage solutions."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

For the first quarter, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.2% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the number 2 position with 13.4% and 12.7% revenue share, respectively. Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top 5 (in a statistical tie for the fourth position) with 8.9% and 8.5%, respectively. Among the top 5 suppliers, Dell posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth (12.0%) during 1Q07.

Network Disk Storage SystemsThe total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) posted 14.3% year-over-year growth in the first quarter to more than $3.0 billion. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.9% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 13.5% and 11.4% revenue share, respectively.

"External direct-attached storage continues to decline, being cannibalized primarily by network storage systems," said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, IDC Storage Systems. "The other threat to external DAS is coming from internal storage that grew at 10.5% in the first quarter of 2007. Developments in the server market, including server virtualization and the adoption of multi-core processors, has lead to deployments of servers with larger storage capacity, thus adding to the decline in external DAS."

In the Open SAN market, which grew 15.3% year over year, EMC was the number 1 vendor with 25.1% revenue share, followed by HP with 15.6%. The NAS market grew 10.9% year over year, led by EMC with 33.3% revenue share and followed by Network Appliance with 29.6% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 68.6% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Network Appliance continues to lead the market with 24.3% share, followed by EMC with 14.6% share.

IDC